ann11071-en-au — Announcement

Café & Kosmos 11 October 2011

Dark matter — an underground search for mystery particles

6 October 2011

Although it is invisible, and has so far never been directly detected, dark matter dominates the Universe. Without this mysterious substance the motion of stars around the centres of their galaxies cannot be explained and, even more importantly, some specialists consider that none of the structures we observe in the Universe could have formed without dark matter. Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are among the best candidates to explain what dark matter may be made of.

Scientists are currently conducting several experiments using different methods to try to uncover the nature of dark matter particles. Dr. Jean-Côme Lanfranchi, from the Excellence Cluster Universe (TUM) will present one of these experiments, CRESST (Cryogenic Rare Event Search with Superconducting Thermometers), to the participants at the next Café & Kosmos, on 11 October 2001.

CRESST, which is located in an underground laboratory 1.3 km under the Gran Sasso mountain range in Italy, has recently recorded signals that stirred lively discussions in the research community. Could it possibly have observed the long-sought WIMPs?